Dale Carnegie’s Golden Rules for Success
BECOME A FRIENDLIER PERSON
1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest, sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
4. Become genuinely interested in other people.
5. Smile.
6. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
7. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about them.
8. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
9. Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.
WIN PEOPLE TO YOUR WAY OF THINKING
1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.
BE A LEADER
1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES FOR OVERCOMING WORRY
1. Live in “day tight compartments.”
2. How to face trouble:
a. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen?”
b. Prepare to accept the worst.
c. Try to improve on the worst.
3. Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health. Public Speaking and Influencing People
BASIC TECHNIQUES IN ANALYZING WORRY
1. Get all the facts.
2. Weigh all the facts—then come to a decision.
3. Once a decision is reached, act!
4. Write out and answer the following questions:
a. What is the problem?
b. What are the causes of the problem?
c. What are the possible solutions?
d. What is the best possible solution?
BREAK THE WORRY HABIT BEFORE IT BREAKS YOU
1. Keep busy.
2. Don’t fuss about trifles.
3. Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries.
4. Cooperate with the inevitable.
5. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth and refuse to give it more.
6. Don’t worry about the past.
CULTIVATE A MENTAL ATTITUDE THAT WILL BRING YOU PEACE AND HAPPINESS
1. Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope.
2. Never try to get even with your enemies.
3. Expect ingratitude.
4. Count your blessings—not your troubles.
5. Do not imitate others.
6. Try to profit from your losses.
7. Create happiness for others.
THE PERFECT WAY TO CONQUER WORRY
1. Pray.
DON’T WORRY ABOUT CRITICISM
1. Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment.
2. Do the very best you can.
3. Analyze your own mistakes and criticize yourself.
PREVENT FATIGUE AND WORRY AND KEEP YOUR ENERGY AND SPIRITS HIGH
1. Rest before you get tired.
2. Learn to relax at your work.
3. Protect your health and appearance by relaxing at home.
4. Apply these four good working habits:
a. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand.
b. Do things in the order of their importance.
c. When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts necessary to make a decision.
d. Learn to organize, deputize, and supervise.
5. Put enthusiasm into your work.
6. Don’t worry about insomnia.
FRIENDSHIP IS THE FOUNDATION OF ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
Friendship is the first and most important element of the foundation for joyful relationships. For a relationship to survive and have a chance to thrive, this foundational element must be established early in the dating stage of the relationship.
Here are a few tips on building friendship using Dale Carnegie’s principles of how to win friends and influence people:
• Do not criticize, condemn, or complain. In normal everyday life, these three Cs can ruin relationships between folks. Their negative impact is more pronounced in the affairs of the heart. Dating, courtship, and marriage relationships are periods to build up. Criticism, condemnation, and complaining only tear people, institutions, and ideologies down. Avoid this three Cs like a plague, and you have great opportunity to build friendship in your relationship.
• Give honest and sincere appreciation. Everyone, no matter his or her height in life, blushes when flattered. Think about what would happen in a person’s heart if he or she is genuinely appreciated for little or great efforts made to give or be worthy. That person would be happy and anticipate more opportunities to be with you.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want. This is a powerful seductive tool used even by leaders. Look for creative ways to keep your partner increasingly interested in the project of finding out if both of you could hit off a marriage relationship together. Avoiding the first principle and accentuating the second principle above would help here. If you are fun to be with, your partner would eagerly want to be with you.
• Become genuinely interested in other people. In all forms of relationship, attention is key. Interest in other people gives you the power to connect with them. It helps you to break the barriers to communication. Genuine interest would present you as an unselfish person seeking for the other person’s welfare. The law of reciprocity is real. If you are genuinely interested in other people, they would gravitate towards you.
• Smile. A smile, they say, is the most infectious disease in the world. If you smile, even at the opportunity to meet someone, he or she would smile back at you. Nobody likes to be where there is strife and turmoil. The best place to be is where there are happy people. A smile is evidence of peace and confidence. It is magnetic. If you have not yet noticed how effective this gift of life is, try experimenting with your siblings or close associates. The toughest and most worried person you would ever meet would succumb to a smile.
• Remember people’s names. A person’s name is the sweetest sound in any language. Even in a strange land, if you meet someone you had known before or just got his or her name by any means, it quickly creates a sense of familiarity that breaks barriers and allows communication to flow and understanding to take place.
• Be a good listener and encourage others to talk about themselves. One art that would help grow a relationship is the art of listening. People like to talk about themselves. You would gain power over people who talk if you listen because, then you would be able to know much about them. Knowledge is power. If you know about my desires and aspirations, you can have a chance to meet or help to meet them and thereby sustain our relationship and even control it to your advantage.
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. If you are attentive to the needs of the other person, that person would pay attention to your needs. Remember the golden rule; do unto others, as you would have them do to you. Your attention to the needs of the other person would produce a reciprocal action.
• Make the other person feel important and do so sincerely. The true relationship religion is to give. Is not it what all religions preach? Genuine praise, sincere appreciation and responsibility would make the other person feel important. Give and accept responsibility from the person you are in a relationship with. Both acts given with sincerity engender a feeling of self-worth and importance.